Tarynbeth Merche
Write the first paragraph of your page here. Section heading Write the first section of your page here. Notes Character Building Challenge 1) Taryn's relationship with her parents is quite well explored throughout these notes, particularly with her father, who she never got to see al the time - and who she loved to go on journeys with. On his part, her father doted on her - and on her sister, although in their early childhood they had little money to spare. Later on though, He would bring Taryn books from her travels, while her sister got nicer clothes. Taryn never asked for anything off him, even when he invited it - except for once, when she asked him to get HER a dress as well as her sister. She justed wanted one really nice dress for a change. He got her it, a long deep blue gown - which she wore on her induction to the university. Her relationship with her mother was a bit different. It was just as loving, but her mother would not just do whatever her daughters asked. Nor would she let them do whatever they pleased. Sometimes this would upset the twins - and they would get annoyed at their mother. But as they grew older - and more able to handle themselves - it became clear that their father should really have been that way with them as well. That's not to say that their mother was strict - she often let them off when she knew she probably shouldn't - jsut because she hate seeing them sad or upset. And she rarely shouted at her children either - yet both of them grew up to be well-behaved. As teenagers they hepled their mother run the shop front. 2) The first thing that people tend to notice about Taryn is her hair, which currenty hangs below her waist. It's a dark brown - almost black, and she tends to wear it in a natural circlet, which joins at the back of her neck to begin a long single plait down her back. On special occasions, such as the midseason festivals, she will wear flowers woven into the plait - but normally it is plain, with just a simple ribbon at the bottom holding it together. Her eyes - while being nice eyes, are fairly common brown eyes. Taryn isn't vary tall, but not unreasonably short - somewhere arounf the 5'5 mark. She is fairly slim, although she has gained a little weight since she move into the city. It was probably good for her though! 3) Taryn doesn't have many scars because, well, she isn't very adventurous. However, she does have two small scars - although neither of them are obvious unless you know about them already. The first is on the back of her neck, just beneath her hairline and slightly to her right. She got it when she fell off her fathers wagon, as a child. The fall was a very short one, and wouldn't normally have hurt her, but there were some rather sharp stones on that particular road. She was cut in several places, but the rest healed without a mark. The second scar is on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, and is a burn in a thin line. She got this when using a warming pan for the first (and only) time. She picked up with her hand slightly over the handle and touching the metal. She dropped the pan, causing a couple of the coals inside to fall onto her bed, singing the sheets. She told no-one and just put the sheets in the laundry. She got new ones back, and no-one has mentioned it - so she appears to have gotten away with it! 4) Taryn cares for her appearance a little - She doesn't like to appear unkept or bedraggled for instance - but she doesn't spend all her time worrying about how she looks like some of the women in the city do... However, since she came to the university where some facilities are more available, she has spent a little more time on her appearance - such as bathing more regularly and even occassionally wearing makeup! 5) Taryn is a 2 on the Kinsey scale. She's never been intimate with another woman - but she would be lying if she said that she'd never wondered. She prefers men in general. But there are one or two women in the city that have caught her eye in the past. 6) Taryn's happiest memory is probably one of three occassions. There was her acceptance into the university - which in many ways was bittersweet as it meant leaving her home. There was also the day she got her own bed - although she found it hard to sleep without her twin there for quite a while after that! The remaining memory is the holiday to Wikre with her whole family - her father went there on business, and they closed the shop for a while and went with him - selling things as travelling merchants for almost two months. They got to see quite a lot of Ithamas on that journey, and Wikre itself was a beautiful coastal city. She had never wanted that journey to end, and remembers it fondly. 7) While Taryn firmly believes that she is the sum of all of experiences, good and bad, and wouldn't erase any event from her history - she does have some memories she would rather forget. Probably the most prominent two memories would be the death of her slightly older cousin, Rylan, as he worked on his parent's farm and was trampled by a bull in heat one spring. They had been fairly close, Rylan, Taryn and her sister, and it was hard to have their best friend torn away while they were barely teenagers. The second was an argument with her sister. It went on over several days, over a boy that Taryn can't even remember the name of. They didn't speak for almost three months after that - until her twin realised that Taryn would be leaving home in just two weeks, and apologised. Taryn apologised to, and they've remained friends since then - but it's never been quite the same. 8) Sadly, Ice-cream hasn't been invented in Taryn's world. However if it had, her favourite flavour would most likely be something fruity. She once had raspberry infused milk and really enjoyed it - so that would be the first flavour she tried! Taryn has always been partial to green - it reminds her of the forests and fields she would travel through with her father whenever he took her on one of his trips. She particularly likes the medium-dark shades. Her favourite song however, is one that is more popular in the city than out in the country. It's a variation of a traditional folksong about the love of Amaryllis for a mortal man, who it is said became the tallest tree in Pyrrhus, and the home of Amaryllis herself. She can't decide which is her favourite flower. She's always loved the agapanthus flowers that grow in the foothills of the mountains near the city - but then lillies have always shared the scent of her twin sister, whom she misses dearly. 9) Other than her family, Taryn's trust lies mainly with the bookseller who sponsored her application to the university - although she doesn't talk to him about her day-to-day issues very often, she would go to him if she were ever in trouble or danger. In terms of confidants, the people she tells her secrets to, she has two friends in the college, one male (Inbar) and one female (Yasmin) - who are siblings from Femea. Yasmin is actually one of the women that Taryn is attracted to - although she's far too scared of ruining their friendship to say anything (obviously, this isn't a secret that she's told Yasmin, but Inbar knows!) 10) There has been two major turning points in Taryn's life so far. The biggest turning point was undoubtedly when she was accepted into the university at Perfyda. She would not have got in if it had not been for the generosity of one of her fathers business contacts there - the one he brought most of her books from. On one occassion, he had travelled with her father to the coastal city of Vatis, for his own business, and they had stopped overnight at the family household. That night he saw who those books had been for, and told her father that he should send Taryn to the university. Her father told his contact that he couldn't afford to do so. They left it at that. However, when her father returned from that trip, he did so excitedly - saying that his contact had agreed to sponsor her to enter the university. The second turning point was a couple of years before this, when her father increased the range of his trading. It made home life a little difficult at first - with longer periods where he was away - but with the increased wealth that the ventures brought, their fortunes rose quite significantly, allowing them to extend their house - giving Taryn and her sister their own rooms - as well as raising their quality of life in general. 11) Taryn has very little experience with animals. As a youth, her family was too young to have a pet, and while she did live in a village surrounded by several farms, she never really spent any time with the creatures there. There were many other villagers with pets, and she wasn't averse to scratching a cat's back or stirkign a dogs head as it passed, but she never really found herself atached to any in particular. Her father had horses, to pull his cart, but she was always a bit scared of them and stayed away. As she got older, she grew less nervous, but she only ever tried to ride one of the once - and regretted the experience! In the city there is a small menagerie, which she has visited once or twice. She likes to look at the exotic animals, but isn't one to want to go in and help feed them or get closer in anyway. Her favourite animal is the Caduus - a red veined serpent with feathered wings (not the same feathers as a bird have - these are roughly the same shape but stiffer. The ones closest to the limb are very similar to scales, getting more similar to regular feathers as they get further from the limb. The bones of the limb itself are flexible, allowing them to coil with the body of the serpent. They can lock into place while gliding to keep the wings fairly rigid.) She doesn't think it's a very pretty animal, but it fascinates her to see it spring into the air and glide towards it's prey. Or in the case of the menagerie, the food left by it's keepers. 12) The technology in the world of pyrhhus is not hugely advanced - but living in a city, and in a university, Taryn often gets to try out many new technologies before the world at large. She has used showers, for example - which have been around in the Lindwurm Empire for a while - but have only recently transitioned across Ithamas. Possibly her favourite technology is the mage light - these are unflickering lights that can be turned on or off. Actually a blend of technology and magic - the mage light is a magically created light stored in a glass ball, which can be retracted into it's holder with a lever. A small flap covers the opening automatically - leaving no light visible. As with all magical devices - it requires a power source, making large scale and hand-held uses difficult. 13) At the university, Taryn has a large four-poster bed. However, she sleeps on just the one half of it (although which half this is isn't set in stone!). This is most likely because as a child (upto around the age of ten, she can't remember exactly) she shared a single bed with her twin. She got a bed of her own when her father started trading with the cities rather than just the local villages, which meant they had more money. Also likely to be a legacy of this time sharing a bed is that the blankets tend to end up curled around her - she had to fight for possession of them at home, and it's a habit for her to keep pulling on them even when she's not sharing a bed. Now that she has more than a single pillow she tends to hug one of them as she sleeps, and sometimes holds one between her legs through the night. She has four, in fact - although she hides some valuables in one, so doesn't actually sleep on it. When she does do the leg-pillow thing, she sleeps curled up - about halfway between straight and the fetal position. However, if she doesn', she tends to sleep pretty much straight - her knees bent only slightly, and on her side (always facing the edge of the bed!) 14) Taryn prefers the warm to the cold - but she prefers just right to both! Ithamas' climate is fairly mild, so she hasn't had much experience of extreme temperatures. However, some of the baths in the universities bathing rooms are rather hot, and she is growing more and more used to spending time in those. In the event of an unexpected change between temperatures, Taryn will just change how much she is wearing. She doesn't tend to travel far from wherever she is staying, so there is always more clothes for her nearby - if it suddenly gets hot she just takes clothes off - she normally wears a few layers anyway. In her village at home she's happy to strip down to her shift - but in the city she's much more self concious and wont take off that much. 15) Back in her home village, Taryn was an early bird - but then she had to be. Although their shop opened around an hour later than most businesses in the village (and much later than the bakers and farmers worked!), she still had to be up to help her mother selling stuff. Her father would travel to get supplies, while her mother would work in the shop. Taryn and her twin would take in helping her on the afternoon or morning - Taryn always preferred to work on the morning - as it left the afternoon free to read one of the books her father had most recently brought back with him. However, In the city she has become a night owl - not having to get up until elevenish daily, means that she tends to sleep late, and do her reading later - this isn't a problem though, as in the city everywhere is lit through the night - especially in the university's library, of which she is often far from the only late night resident! 16) Taryn doesn't have a large family. Both grandparents on her mother's side passed away when she was young, and she has never met her grandfather on her father's side. Her grandmother on her fathers side has succumbed to mind illness and while still alive, is cared for by priestesses at a temple near her home. She has an uncle in Wikre who she likes, but has only met a couple of times. Her mothers sister lives nearby though on a local farm, and so she is Taryn's closest relative. 17) Taryn has her own room in the university dormitories, and there is a desk in it. However, she seldom uses it - much preferring to be around people. She tends to take her books and papers out onto one of the rooftop plazas, or the vast university lawns if the waeather is pleasant. If it's not, she often finds herself in the library - in the beautiful main hall which houses the common use books and rows of desks. When she works she tends to have books spread out all around - often taking up extra desks as she jumps from book to book. Outside, she's a little less spread out - she needs to be able to catch everything if there's a breeze! (She once ran into one of the teaching scholars as she chased her notes on the formation of Amagi, which had been blown away by an untimely gust.) 18)At the univeristy, meals are provided for Taryn - although she does have full access to cooking facilities if she wishes to use them. Taryn has reasonable cooking ability, but the meals that are provided are far nicer - so she rarely utilises those particular facilities. She learned to cook when her family were still poor, she would often cook lunch for her mother and sister while they worked the afternoon shift at the shop. She was never as good as her mother - but she was better than her sister! Her favourite recipe is a spinach and potato dish - made from local potatoes and the wild spinach growing near her village - along with a little milk (or cream, if possible) and some soft spices. It may have a name, but her family always called it spinach and potato. 19) Taryn's favourite method of travel is by cart. At least - that's the one she's most used to! She doesn't travel often, and whenever she does, it's normally her father who drives her. Exceptions to this include the two longer trips that she has been on for the university - and several smaller trips for which she borrowed a university horse. She is unaccustomed to riding however - and although it makes her feel like she's on an adventure of some sort, she finds it rather uncomfortable and would rather not do it very often. 20) Taryn doesn't have any irrational phobias as such - but there are two major fears she has. The first is fire. Or at least, burning alive. She doesn't mind being near fires - but she is scared of the idea that she might burn. The second fear is slavery. Taryn values her freedom greatly, and would hate to be forced to follow someone's orders. She's not averse to instructions, but she feels it should be her choice to follow them. Fortunately for her, slavery is illegal in Ithamas. In fact, she has never seen a slave - only heard that they have them in Femea, Hortum and the Southern Isles. 21) Even if she read all the books in the Aurorum Great Library, or asked all the scholars and mages in the Lindwurm Empire, Taryn would have no idea what a cutie mark was, or what she was supposed to do with it. 22) If Taryn could time travel, she would undoubtedly go into the past first. She is, after all, studying the history of the world. Ideally, she would go back to the time of creation - although as no-one knows the exact process by which the gods created the world - this could be very dangerous. If anyone in Pyrrhus knew about it, she would want to travel back to the Tilting of the World. But that terrible time remains unknown to the inhabitants of the world. It is most likely she would go back to the (attempted) invasion of Ithamas by the Lindwurm Empire. In the early days of the empire - before Hortum's uneasy alliance with them - the Emperor decided to expand his kingdom to beyond the seas. In an unexpected attack, the empire managed to take over the eastern quarter of Ithamas - Up to Perfyda, where they sieged the city for eight days before the hosts from the capital came to repel them. The Ithamas army was far bigger than the empire had expected, and they retreated to coast. After a brief respite, the King's armies followed, and tales of an epic battle across the clifftops began to spread. It is said the battle lasted for three days. On the second day, the King of Ithamas himself slew the Empire's General - but the empire were well trained, and fought on. Shortly afternoon on the thir day though - the sounds of battle stopped. But there was no victor. In fact, there were no survivors from that day. messengers from the battlefield to the encampent reported that that armies ahd simply vanished - leaving only the corpses of the dead - but far too few to account for the whole of the two forces. It is a mystery that remains to this day, and Taryn woud be very interestd in finding out what happened there - as the last inherited king, Myrin's disappearance was a major turning point in her countries history - and one that she has always wondered about - and secretly imagined a thousand reasons for... 23) As a lady of education, Taryn is not superstitious at all. However, like many who are not superstitious, she still subconciously avoids sitting down when a mage is in the room, and always taps a doorframe twice with her shoe before entering a building for the first time. (This is to prevent any bad spirits you might have around you from entering the builing and bringing misfortune upon your host!). There are plenty of otehr thigns she does, just because she was tol to as a child - by parents who also weren't really superstitious... 24) Taryn's ideal lover would be someone bookish, and not very adventurous. But he should still be a little bit adventurous. And spontaneous. But not too much. She just longs for someone that she can lay in bed with while they both read their favourite book, or even just in silence. she doesn't have many physical prefernces - but she is partial to dark hair. That applies to both men and women! 25) Taryn's fingers are fairly long, and thinner than most peoples - but they're soft and generally unmarred (Except for her scar!). She doesn't do anything that is likely to make them calloused, although if she had stayed at home in the shop, they would have been a bit rougher - as evidenced by her sister's, although neither of them have particularly hard skin. She plays an instrument, but as a wind instruemnt rather than string, it hasn't had much effect on her hands. Havign said that, she barely plays it, so even if it had been string it wouldn't have had much effect! 26) Favourites: Comfort Food, Vice, Outfit, Hot Drink, In Ithamas, the season are much milder that elsewhere in the world - while there is some change in temperature, the summers and winters are short - with long springs and autumns. Disregarding the events that happen at various times of the year, Taryn likes mid-autumn most - around the time the leaves turn golden, but before the showers and cold really kick in strongly. She doesn't like the winter much - although it gives her an excuse to stay in the university complex and read! She likes spring for the events that happen then - both of her two trips for the university, and most of her father's trading journeys were in spring. Her favourite holiday is in summer. Creation Day - which celebrates all twelve of the gods, and is exactly half a year from midwinter and Sunbringer's Day. She alternates yearly, spending her Creation Day at her old home near Culpa (visiting her family and attending her villages events as she did as a child) and celebrating it in the extravagent festivals of Perfyda with her friends in the city. Taryn tends to wear simple dresses of medium-dark colours, especially green! She enjoys the few occassions where she is required to wear a more formal gown - but as a non-noble student, she doesn't have the opportunity that often. This is a good thing really, as she wouldn't be able to afford another gown! Her dresses are normally short sleeved, and medium-length, coming to just above or below her knees. She gets them tailored cheaply, by allowing apprentice dressmakers to work on them rather than master of journeymen to do as most people would. Most of them have two fabrics (or at least colours) in them. Her favourite comfort food is a small, sweet, bread-based snack that is popular across the country, and even in the Eastern Empire. It is made similarly to regular bread, but with sugar in the dough, and honey injected into the centre of the tiny sweet buns. HEr favourite soft drink is Cocoa. She can't often afford proper chocolate, which is expensive in Ithamas, but cocoa is provided by the university on an evening. When she lived at home, it was far less common - and the hot drinks they would normally drink in the winter would be herbal infusions. She loves reading ancient books - old legends and beliefs about the time before the mists. 27) While Taryn identifies with many of the songs she hears - there arent any in particular that she feels describe more than just a facet of her. 28) If Taryn's life was a genre, it would be a textbook. For her, it's all about learning. She loves to learn, and to read. She enjoys social life too, but it's not what drives her. Some might say that her life is more of a feel-good film, a tale of a poor child raised in status to study at the second-most prestigous university in the country. But it is important to remember that her tale is not over. She will undoubtedly spend some time as a romance novel, and hopefully none as a crime tale. It's most likely, given that she lives in a world of magic, that her genre is myth and legend - but if certain events align, she will become an epic adventure story! 29) Taryn doesn't wear perfume normally - she doesn't get enough money to be able to afford the expensive perfumes that the rich might wear. But she does bath normally in the university baths, which have several scented pools. She tends to prefer the two floral pools, particularly jasmine, which she actually hadn't smelled properly before coming to the baths for the first time. On occasion she bathes in the citrus pool, for a refreshing change that helps her feel revitalised all day. 30) Dear Taryn, Having gotten to know you better over the last month - I'm glad I did all this. The whole thing has taken me somewhere I've never been before - made me ask questions i'd have never though to ask. I hope that perhaps sometime we will be able to do this again, and I can learn more about you. In the meantime, Good luck with your studies, and enjoy your time in Perfyda. Adam 31) Taryn's full name is Tarynbeth Merche, but she rarely uses it. In fact, most people don't even know that Taryn isn't her actual name. Her parents tend to call her Tar, while her sister has always called her Rynni - her parents say that when they were both young, Mae could only pronounce Tarynni, which is where the rather juvenile nickname comes from. 41) Taryn has one sibling - her twin sister Maeyla (although everyone calls her Mae). They look fairly similar - both have the same long hair, brown eyes and general body shape - but they couldn't be more different. Mae only occasionnally reads out of interest, and is much more content to spend her time outside, in a tree or scaling a cliff. But despite her more adventurous nature, Mae lives for new clothes. She loves the dresses her father brings her, and she speneds the rainy days making new ones out of the fabrics he brings back - although these are generally not quite as nice as the professionally made dresses he brings! On a day-to-day basis she works at her parents' shop, or takes work as a seamstress when it's available. On an evening she roams the local forest, sometiems foraging - other times just enjoying the trees. While she still wears a dress as she explores, it is one of her cheaper, tougher dresses (which nevertheless have scratches and tears in them!). She has little concept of modesty - she would wear a dress to climb trees, even if she wore nothing beneath it - but she does like to look good, so she wears tough leggings to protect her legs from scratches when she's in the forest. She goes through a lot of them. 43) The earliest thing that Taryn can remember is sitting in the grass with her twin, playing with the little yellow flowers that grew there - although she doesn't remember it well enough to know what those flowers were. Mae was wearing a circlet of them, and Taryn had a string of them wrapped all around one arm. She has the vague sense that their mother was there too - but she doesn't explicitly remember it. She also doesn't remember what she was wearing - but Mae was wearing a thin cotton dress, so she was probably wearing something similar. They had been around 3 years old, she thinks - and she has no idea where that field was. When she asks her mother, she is simply told that they've been to a lot of fields. 47) Sadly, Taryn has never had the opportunity to go on a date - although she does hope she will soon! 62) Taryn has not been in a relationship yet. But she's been feeling a little lonely lately - so she would like one to begin pretty quickly... 78) Taryn's favourite alocholic drink is a sweet wine. Back in her home village, she had only ever had ale and cider - which were ok, but there were nicer non-alcohlic drinks - such as the elderflower water her region was particularly known for. There were some wines in her village, but she didn't like them - they were rather fortified and to strong for her. But the fruitier wines that women of Perfyda often drank are much more to her liking. Of course, she enjoys the elderflower wine, but there are several that she enjoys. She only has wine on special occasions though. The university rarely serves alcohol to its students, and she has better things to spend her money on! Category:People